Leaving the Water, Before it Boils Me Over

Image From Joyce Howard

When I was a boy scout we would go to camp every summer.  One of the myths of camp was that if you put a frog in a bucket of boiling water it would jump out immediately. However, if you put the frog in unheated lake water and then boiled the water, the frog would not jump out and would eventually explode.  We never tried this as we were not intentionally cruel to animals, but the story has stayed with me most of my life.  This past year has had me reflecting on this phenomenon a lot of late and feeling very connected to the frog.

This has been a year of challenges.  Taking on a new role within our school corporation, trying to find time balancing my old job with supporting the facilitators and learners at the Weidner School of Inquiry@PHS, and also stretching myself physically, emotionally, and publicly.

Given that introduction, it may seem that I am relating to the frog being thrown into the hot water, and wanting to jump out, but that has not been were my connection to the frog has been.  My connection has been to the frog who is put in the lake water, and then does not respond to the heating water around him, and thus explodes.

Let me explain.  As we go about our daily business of life, we become familiar and comfortable with our surroundings.  We often become so familiar that we don't notice the changes that are happening, but often we don't notice the changes that need to happen, and this is the greatest risk, this is where the frog gets fried.  It is not that he doesn't recognize the water getting warmer, it is that he doesn't recognize the change that needs to occur-leaving the water.

With this in mind, there are two events from this year that have stretched me personally, that has had carry over benefits to my professional work.  The most recent is flying to California for the New Tech Network's Spring Leadership Summit.  I have not flown for 12.5 years.  It is not that, I have not had opportunities to fly, but rather I simply refuse to do things that would force me to fly.  As I right this though, I am looking out the window of my room at the Claremont Resort in Berkley, CA after having flown from Chicago the day before.  I am enjoying an incredible view of the San Fransisco Bay and the city skyline in the distance.  It is something that I would never have experienced had I not jumped out of the bucket and what was comfortable.  Additionally, I have been able to spend some very focused time thinking about my school, where we started this year, how far we have come, and ways we need to continue to grow in the coming years.  I feel energized and excited to finish the year strong.

The second event happened earlier this month when I participated in Dancing with the Stars Marshall County.  I am not a dancer, I have very little rhythm, but over a three month period I went from novice Salsa dancer to performing this dance in front of several hundred people.

It was way beyond the comfort of the bucket, but it taught be something new, gave my students a new perspective on who I am, and gave me a sense of confidence on the dance floor.  From my initial tentative steps I was able to know the dance so well that in early rehearsal performances I was able to adapt the dance to where the music was when we got slightly off pace.  Later that night, this new confidence allowed me to have a blast dancing with my youngest daughter.

Whether the challenges we take on be personal or professional, physical or emotional, the key is that we venture away from the bucket so that we can notice when our environment begins to change, and we can adapt to those changes rather than be boiled over by them.

An Avalanche of Information

Video Note:  I tried really hard to find a giant snowball that starts small and get ginormous as it rolls down they hill before smashing into a ski resort, but since that search lead me to nothing, I thought this video from the Vin Diesel action movie Triple X was a great representation as well.

Sometime in late October I had breakfast with a former professor of mine, Mark Soto.  Mark is a theology professor at Grace College in Winona Lake, IN and is one of the smartest people I know.  Whenever I am fortunate enough to connect with Dr. Mark I leave with a lot to ponder and think about.

This day was no different.  As our conversation wound from how Jesus handled tough conversations to the current state of education in America, Dr. Mark passed on to me a great explanation of how he thought education had changed.  When Mark began his studies students would choose a field and then spend a great deal of time immersed in learning all of the information that there was to learn in their field.  This mastery of content was the goal of learning.

He then pivoted to what he viewed as the key change.  The amount of information is no longer master-able   The internet and the connectivity that it provides has made this an impossible task.  Rather, the goal of education should now be to give students the tools needed to find, evaluate, and curate this information.  In the back of my brain this was not a new revelation, it was something that I had been thinking about and preaching in many forms for several years now.

What it wasn't was a concrete experience of within my life.  Then Christmas Break came.  My goal for Christmas Break was to read daily, finish several books, and pair down the list of reading in my Pocket app account.  Eventually pairing down, by reading not deleting, my pocket account soon became my over riding endeavor.  Try as I might though, it just continued to grow.  Even after spending hours daily at Starbuck's reading while having my pumpkin spice latte, I was not closer to getting to the end of the list.  In fact it continued to grow, even as I read most of what was coming in on my Feedly account.  Even when I eliminated things that I was not truly interested in, the list would not go down.

Nor should I expect it to.  Even with an infinite amount of time, I could not conquer the list, because never before in time has the amount we know expanded so rapidly and been so accessible.  For our students it will continue to do so.  Thus, while content knowledge is important, Dr. Mark is right.  We need to teach our learners to find outstanding and enlightening things to read, show them how to evaluate the information that they are taking in, help them develop the organizational skill of curating, and then model for them how to reflect and retain the information that they take in.  Education is no longer about memorizing dates, facts, and formulas.  It is about accessing, evaluating, and refining what we want to learn, then contributing our knowledge to the every growing catalog of humanity.

Faux Me

A lot has been said in the news of late about bullying in school.  It is an issue that as an educator and parent of two daughters that never seems to be far from my mind.  I work at a school where bullying is a problem, but I don't want to paint a picture that it is a major problem or what we spend a majority of our time handing out discipline for, because we don't.

Students have conflicts, and students have mean, spiteful, and downright awful things said about and to them.  When they come to our office we try to find a solution to the problem, most successfully by getting our guidance counselors involved and having the students go through a mediation process, and on occasion when necessary we utilized punitive discipline measures if the counseling approach does not work.  For more overt or physical bullying we go right to punitive discipline with the student, but most of what we deal with is drama and name calling.

Lately, we have been dealing more and more with Cyber-bullying.  This is not an earth shattering revelation, or even something unique to our school, although it definitely is a by-product of our technological age in which things that were previously often said only in private, and suddenly made them very public.  Things that are said now have a much broader and quicker reach than they did when I was in high school.  The hurtful comments, or embarrassing moments that used to quickly fade into the background, are now posted, liked, tweeted, re-tweeted, and made into viral videos for all to see again and again.

I am not technophobic, or someone who sees technology as the end our civilization as we know it.  As I told our school newspaper when I was interviewed by them for an article on technology, it is neither good nor bad-how we use it can be either good or bad.  It is however, something that we need to educate ourselves and our students about. This is a about a teachable moment and learning that has taken place within me.

Today, while in a meeting at our corporation office, I received a google chat message from our building secretary who stated that a teacher had contacted her about a student who had something inappropriate on their computer and that it was about me.  When our meeting had finished, I went to the teachers room, and was shown a fake twitter account that was sending out tweets as me.

It was something that eventually was bound to happen to one of the administrators in our building, and so it did not shock me. Nor did the language that the student was using in sending out their posts.  It was vulgar, crass, and did not require much wit or thought to create.  I was mildly offended that faux me wasn't very witty or insightful.

What really upset me though, was not what was being said, but rather the students who had followed faux me, and those that had favorited or re-tweeted some of the statements faux me was making.  It was not the students that I expected to see doing this.  The students who were deciding to follow faux me, largely were "good students".  They were some of our athletes, better students, students that I thought I had a good working relationship with.  They largely were not the students I see and work with on a regular basis, who I would not be surprised would vent about me in this way.

Even with all of this, the learning for me was yet to come.  As the day went I on, and I doggedly tried to track down who had set up this account, I missed the bigger picture.  The issue was not what was being said, or how it might damage my professional life.  It was not the horror in my mind that these are things that students thought I would think or say.  It was not the frustration of the process in contacting twitter to have the account removed.  Rather it was walking down the hallway at the end of the day, feeling like everyone was watching me, and that certain groups of students when I walked by were speaking about me, laughing about this, and gossiping about what was going on.  That was the hardest part of the day, and that was where the learning occurred.

It suddenly became very real, I now better understood what the students that come in to my office and say that people were talking about them felt like.  Even if the majority of students were not talking about this, and in reality a majority probably did not know it even exists, it still felt as if all eyes were on me and people were talking about me as I walked by.  I felt uncomfortable, I felt like I didn't want to be there, I felt that I wanted to go back to my office, shut the door, and stay there until the building was empty.

I am an adult, who is secure in who I am as a person.  Imagine being a self-conscious teenager and having to experience this on a daily basis?   Maybe it is time to look closer at how we are teaching students to relate to each other and the broader impact their actions now have in our digital, connected world?  Maybe we need to think before we tweet, and be willing to stand up when others put people down, rather than passively encouraging that behavior through the seemingly insignificant actions of favoriting, liking, or re-tweeting?  Maybe as a nation we need to return the idea of "civility" to civil discourse?

Here's to the Trailblazers

Apple always does such a great job in creating an image for what they want their consumers to perceive themselves as.  They tug at our heartstrings, even if we have never used or want to use an Apple project.  This is one of my favorites, but now as I am in the first year of creating a new school from the ground up, it has come to resonate even more with me.  Although I think it should go beyond thinking different, but rather focus on blazing a trail.

The hardest part of this year has not been following the path trod by those who have started New Tech Network schools before, it has been in finding our own branch of that path.  For while New Tech has done a fantastic job in preparing us as a staff, giving us a solid foundation of professional development in the practice of PBl, it is the branches that divert from that path that we must travel as we work to make the Weidner School of Inquiry a reality.

The vision that we have is clear, we can all articulate it, explain it, inspire with it, and dream about it.  We know where we want to go, and what we want our students to look like when they graduate.  We have all the buzzwords, vocabulary, and jargon carefully memorized and categorized to be utilized for maximum impact with our students, our community, and ourselves.  The vision is the easy part, it is creating path to that destination that takes a very sophisticated kind of GPS.

It is figuring out what to do to get to that vision that is the challenge.  How do we create a culture that focuses on trust, respect, and responsibility and then nurture it throughout the year?  How do we help freshman mature and see the value in education?  How do we focus on the day to day grind, without losing site of the progress we have made?  How do we motivate the unmotivated, but more importantly get them to connect their learning not to a grade, but to the ideas themselves?  How do we give students a new pathway of learning, while realizing that the core skills of learning-reading, reflecting, questioning, discussing, and analyzing-have not changed since the days of Socrates, and it is these skills that most of our learners lack the most.  Where do we turn, when the path seems most tangled to find a new way forward?  How do we celebrate all that we have done, when there seems to be so much more to do?

So here is to Washington, who as President had the pressure of everything he did setting precedent for those who came after him.  To Lewis, Clark, and the mountain men, who not only saw the Rockies from a distance across the plains, but also forged a path through them that others could follow.  To Lindbergh and Earhart who saw the same oceans as Columbus, Magellan, and DeGama and a new way to cross them from above.  To the many men of NASA in the 1950s and 1960s, who not only saw the moon shining brightly each evening, but found a way to put a man on it's surface.  Here is to everyone who blazed a new path, traveled a new highway, or forged ahead on their own.  For while the joy comes in the journey, it is the strength to press onward that gets you there.

Wellness Update: The Holiday Edition 1

Thanksgiving, heck the whole holiday season, has always been fraught with dangers for me, especially as I have become an adult and moved away from home.  It is a time of relaxation, boredom, family, football, and vastly overeating due to all of those factors.  As the holiday season progresses, the eating continues over a number of holiday events, and my propensity to pack on the pounds increases as well.

This Thanksgiving I was determined to try and avoid that get a good start to the holiday season.  Wednesday started off well, sort of.  My planned day at school was waylaid by the fog and a day of not having to worry about having access, and time, to eat in an unhealthy manner for long stretches became clouded by a day of working in my office, with access to snacks brought in for our staff that would now go uneaten, unless the small group at school all chipped in.  I am proud to say that while I did indulge in some cheese and crackers and some great cocktail meatballs, I avoided the cupcakes arranged and frosted to look like a turkey dressed as a pilgrim.  That evening, instead of heading home when school was cancelled for the day, I stuck around and went to yoga class to kickoff my weekend.  

Thursday morning came, and the eating fest began sensible enough with an fried egg sandwich for breakfast.  Lunch, not so good as I watched my fantasy football team’s defense (Houston) get torched by the Lions, and drowned my sorrows in a small plate of homemade nachos.   Thanksgiving dinner was a better performance for me, as I ate sensible of the turkey, stuffing and other Thanksgiving faire, but the double helping of desserts was probably not a wise idea on my part.  I woke up the next morning, just hoping I had not gained 5 pounds.   Amazingly I lost 1.  I credit the better digestion created by some of the yoga poses Sam Boys had us do on Wednesday night.  

Friday was another odd day of eating, as I did well in the morning, not as well in the evening as I cooked my wife’s favorite meal, Italian Chicken Bake, which is fettucine noodles baked with chicken, onions, and mushrooms that have been simmered and then topped with parmesan and mozzarella cheese and a cream sauce.  It is decadently good, but not really great low in calories.  I had one small bowl, and then picked at my daughter’s leftovers.

Saturday brought the most bizarre eating day.  I had nachos for lunch again, while watching football-notice a pattern yet-then consumed a whole tub of popcorn and a box of raisinets while watching Lincoln at the movie theater.  I rationalized this over consumption fest by having a Diet Dr. Pepper, and the satisfaction that it was a really great movie, with the most realistic portrayal of Lincoln I have ever seen.

Sunday brought dinner at my mother-in-laws, and more moderation in eating, with no dessert this time.  Monday morning I stepped on the scale, be delightedly find I had lost another pound to make it 2 for the week of Thanksgiving.  Unfortunately, I am not sure what I did to do so.  

As I sit eating a salad for dinner tonight, prior to our game against Triton, I am hoping that I can continue whatever streak my metabolism was on last week and continue to lose weight, while I gain great moments with my family this holiday season. The reality though is that it will not happen by mere luck for too much longer. With this in mind I will be back in yoga on Wednesday night, and will be adding a Monday cycling class to my workout regime, as well as looking for a Thursday afternoon class that I can join as well. Or maybe I will take Sam Boys challenge and join him on a Wednesday night for yoga, followed by Bodypump, and then restorative yoga...

What can I Learn from a Rock Star

We had a motivational speaker in for a convocation today.  It was an assembly that I have to admit I was somewhat skeptical about.  I am always nervous when you have someone come in and talk to students about the mistakes that they made in their younger lives, and that they were now fine and had gone through those tough times to come out on the other side in one piece, if not always completely whole.  My fear always is that the students will get the message that the speaker went out and partied and lived it up and was then able to turn their life around and be productive.  I am not a person who doubts that this can, and does happen, but I am enough of a realist to know that the success rates in those cases are a lot less than the rate of failures.

This evening, as part of the convocation series, our school hosted a concert by the motivational speaker's band.  It featured his band, and two other bands that I had never heard of.  We had a packed auditorium as students from around the county came to take advantage of the free show.  The music they played was not overly memorable, I cringed as one of the bands did a metal version of Phil Collins In the Air Tonight, a seminal song of my youth, and did an equally sour face for the rock version of Beat It, but I also noticed something else.

The 2 intro bands, and band leader, who barely knew our students, could elicit from them great expressions of enthusiasm about anything they said or did.  When the son of the lead singer came on stage and lead the crowd in cheers, they responded more vocally and physically then when our cheerleaders exhorted the crowded during home games.  He ran from one side of the stage to another, having the students do a vocal and physical wave as he ran by.  It made me wonder, what do Rock Stars know the educators may not have tapped into?

As I sit in our now empty auditorium, and watch the roadies pack up the equipment to head out into the night, I still don't have any real answers.  I know that I watched the motivational speaker be very frank and honest with our students.  I watched as he was able to connect with a large number of them during only a 15 minute talk.  I also know that these are not last relationships or contacts, but could in a large part be the thrill of being out of class for 50 minutes, and seeing a very charismatic individual perform.  But there was something else at work.

Each person on that stage was willing to be themselves, was willing to risk being a little foolish.  They were able to be real in front of our students, to be fully human, and in doing so were able to connect.  One of the skits that the convocation crew did was about wearing masks.  In watching what happened throughout the night, it made me wonder what mask do I wear in my role at school, and what might happen if I simply took it off?

Update to Post:
The morning after the concert I opened my email to find a message from Michael Delp who teaches Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II on our staff.  He wrote what I call a Jerry Maguire message.  Many of you probably remember the scene, Jerry wakes up in the middle of the night and writes a manifesto about how to change their business.  It is a revolutionary moment for him, and it was for Michael.  He was so fired up that he had to email our staff at 2:30 AM before he went to sleep.

The next afternoon I made a point of going to Michael's room and watching him teach his students.  It was amazing, he was unmasked and teaching like a rock star.  He took off the mask, told his students he was standing on a professional cliff.  I confessed that he makes them learn things simply to jump through the hoops that the state has set up.  He revealed that he believed there was a better way and that they would be trying to incorporate those kinds of activities into class.  He also said that they would have to jump through some hoops, but he explained why they had to do this.  More importantly he explained why learning those concepts was important as well.

The response from the students was the best part.  They were engaged, energized, excited to be learning math.  Mr. Delp spent the next 15 minutes going through a problem about fixing a bicycle.  The students continued to be engaged and work through the problem.  At various times he had to remind students to stay with him, as this was a review of the day before, but he continued to hold their attention until they got to the problem for the day, which he introduced by showing this slide and telling the story from his life of how he came up with this problem.

It was math in a real life context, that most of us have never thought of.  It was math that engaged his students.  It was teaching without a mask.  Teaching that took a risk, not of the learners, but of the teacher and then the students as a group.  It was teaching that I believe will make a difference.  It was an example of what can happen when we are willing to take off the mask and teach from the place that we really believe education should come from, our hearts.

Who's your Yogi now?

One of the best parts of my Journey to Wellness has been the opportunity to take some classes at the Fitness Forum.  It has brought some variety to my exercise routine, given me a break from the treadmill, and allowed me to explore other fitness options.  During our fall break at PHS I was able to take advantage of our day off and attend a class that I had been wanting to try, Yoga.

This may seem very out of place for someone who is not at all flexible, but the idea of being able to try and improve my limited flexibility, spend time in an activity that is designed to reduce stress, and learn something new was an intriguing proposition.  It was a proposition that would lead to me find a new exercise that I am beginning to really love.

My first experience with yoga, beyond the Wii Fit yoga program, was at an Indiana Association of School Principals conference when I attended a session on Yoga for Discipline.  The 30 minute session focused on how we can utilize the principles of yoga to help students focus and calm down when in stressful situations.  We learned one position, and really focused on how to control our breathing. This class would be nothing like this.

Class began with the sound of popping cartilage and bone as my sinews, muscles and body bent, twisted and stretched in ways that it hasn't in decades.  The best part, while I was moving into the various positions of yoga and reawakening long ago calcified joints I felt no pain in those muscles.  The instructor was very good at encouraging us to explore the positions, but also to stay within our limits.

The second piece of learning that occurred was that yoga is strenuous.  In my mind I thought of yoga as sitting around stretching and listening to calming music, which did occur.  What I didn't anticipate was how much it pushed my body, how many calories I burned (over 300 based on Fitness Forum's calculations), and how much the warrior pose could make my legs shake from exertion.

Finally my hour of yoga was a fantastic way to get away from all of the daily stresses of life.  Within moments of entering the yoga studio, sitting on my mat and beginning to learn how to focus on my breathing my mind began to empty.  For the next hour, all that was able to penetrate my focus and concentration was the soothing sound of the instructor's voice moving us from position to position and the sound of my breathing as I focused on my practice.  Even the soothing music faded into the background, and no other thoughts from my day were able to penetrate this envelope of calm.  It was rejuvenating and enlightening all at the same time.

Since my first experience with yoga I have returned to class one time (the next week) and it is joining my Saturday morning Body Pump class as a part of my weekly fitness routine.  In short I am learning that while the Fitness Forum is a great place to lift weights, run, swim, or play court games, it is even better when you utilize the structured classes they offer to enhance your exercise routine.  I really can't wait to see what class I can explore next.